1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to controlling a display panel of an electrical appliance, and more particularly to programming the display characteristics of a light emitting diode (LED) in an appliance, such as a printer device.
2. Related Art
LEDs are used in printer operator panels to indicate various printer status conditions, such as power on, out of paper, out of ink, paper tray selection, and printer errors. In "low" end printers, often for cost reasons, only one or two LED's and buttons are provided on the external control/display panel. Printer operational status information is communicated to the user through the LEDs.
Existing printer control/display panels are static, and particularly, the limited number of LEDs are not programmable, in contrast to many other features of the host personal computer (PC) to which the printer is usually connected. It is desirable to add programmability through the printer driver software of the printer to allow user adjustment of the printer operator panel LED functions.